A marketing professional was excited to implement Marketing Automation for their company. After looking at the different vendors, they felt confident in choosing one of them. They were so excited about the prospect of implementing new technology, that they jumped right into it without much planning or research.
As soon as they started using their chosen vendor's automation platform, everything went wrong! The site crashed constantly and emails never got sent out to customers on time. It turns out that the professionals hadn't done any market research before choosing a vendor - because there are several good options with great reviews - and now the business has lost tons of money due to these mistakes along with customer dissatisfaction.
We all know that Marketing Automation is the key to success in today's world, but what can go wrong with implementing it?
Marketing Automation Solutions are great for making sure your company never misses an opportunity to market to customers, but it can also go wrong. I've seen some pretty spectacular marketing automation fails that would make Mickey Mouse cringe.
For example, one of my recent clients set up their marketing automation so that they would automatically send out emails about the new product line every day until someone unsubscribed. This was fine until somebody accidentally subscribed themselves and unsubscribed from all of our other email lists in protest.
Every good marketing team knows the importance of Marketing Automation, but not many companies know how to implement it correctly. In order to be successful, there are a few steps that need to be followed from the beginning to ensure you have set things up for success. Here are the four key steps:
Step #1
Run a workflow analysis and determine what your company's ideal customer journey looks like. This will help you decide on if you're going to use drip campaigns or nurture journeys, among others.
Step #2
Determine key performance indicators that reflect business goals and align them with campaign data so that campaign results can be measured against those KPIs
Step #3
Define your audience profile by collecting as much information as possible about its demographics, psychographics, geographics and behaviours.
Step #4
Allow a realistic amount of time and resources for implementation and testing of the Marketing Automation Solution, as well as staff training.
Please keep in mind that everyone has different learning styles; some might prefer more hands-on training while others may need more theoretical knowledge first.
Excitement can over-ride good judgement. It's easy for any of us to get carried away as the excitement builds and we begin implementing marketing automation into our workflow. But remember, this is a big change that will require time and money invested in training staff on how it all works together seamlessly - so plan accordingly!
Alan Macdonald
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